How a *REAL* president tweets. This tweet by former President Obama is the most liked tweet in history. 45 should take notes. As I know some of you cannot go to the former president’s Twitter page in good conscience, I’ve taken the liberty of screen-capping it for you.

Also, please don’t claim that you’re not racist/homophobic because your BFF/friends/loved one is a person of color or is Jewish or is GLBTQ. All three communities want you to cut that crap out because you’re offering them up as a sacrifice to assuage your guilt.

For those who want to read… My dear friend Kate went to the library this week and got quite a few books with main characters who were people of color so she read them to her kids. She also shared this link that she found for books about social justice issues.

One thing for which I am thankful is that they were changing around the reading lists when I was a junior and senior in high school to give us a greater breadth of American writers who were not white. We read Amy Tan, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, and they were adding a book by Sandra Cisneros to the sophomore reading list. I was also fortunate to read some pieces by Gary Soto and some young adult literature about concentration camps in middle school. College brought me Drink Cultura by José Antonio Burciaga and A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki.

Political ramifications of all of this. I’m incredibly disappointed with 45 over his statements and refusal to condemn the neo-Nazi marchers outright. His daughter is an Orthodox Jew and they were calling for people like her, her husband, and her kids to die in ovens like in Nazi Germany.

I am thinking… about Charlottesville, my own privilege, and the need to speak out and say, as a white woman, that the neo-Nazi crap going on there is abhorrent.

I am thankful… for last night. My youngest cousin called to let us know that she and her mom had just bought her wedding dress and she was coming up to show it to my grandmother. When we were taking the pictures with her and grandma (who was miraculously alert and smiling), we discovered that the portrait of my late grandfather in his Navy uniform was photobombing them. We had a good laugh and got teary because we miss him and photobombing them is totally something he would have enjoyed doing. (My cousin and I were beloved by him so she’s ecstatic that he was there in spirit last night.)

I am hoping… what I just ate and drank will get my blood sugar to where it needs to be and I won’t feel so hypoglycemic.

I am learning… the fingers that are least painful to prick with my glucometer. I am also trying to get a baseline for what “normal” should feel like.

In my kitchen… just noshed on some Chinese pork.

In the school room… class ends for me this week (4 chapters to outline for the quiz, 2 reports, and 2 journals due on Wednesday) and then I get to spend some time outlining the Business English textbook so I can test out of the class.

Closing Notes: My priest made an interesting point this morning. She commented that it is an example of white privilege that she was able to step away from the Internet and all the coverage of Charlottesville to go help at a community event raising money for the local theater. For many people, the presence of the jerks in Charlottesville is not something that they can escape. I have friends whose relatives were in concentration camps, whose family members perished, and for whom the neo-Nazi presence was a reminder that there are people there who want to kill them and their children for being Jewish or of Jewish extraction.

For people of color, they are reminded every day of their lower status in America and quite a few people have commented that if the protesters with tiki torches had been African-American, the National Guard would have been called in to quell the protest. Others have offered equivocations that the Antifa and BLM are as bad as the neo-Nazis and that’s utter bullshit. First of all, most of the Antifa just want to go cause mayhem — seriously, even anarchists disavow association with them. Secondly, BLM is largely peaceful but white people are incredibly threatened by them marching that law enforcement tends to go overboard. The neo-Nazis in Charlottesville look like a bunch of frat boys in their khakis and polo shirts — they haven’t experienced a day of persecution in their lives!

White people need to speak up and condemn these acts. Yes, crap does happen where African-Americans yell epithets at white folks — I experienced it living in Columbus, Ohio. However, I didn’t take it as personally as I could have because I knew that there was a lot of hurt and anger behind it that spans generations and that they were dealing with things that I would never experience. I have never had a landlord refuse to rent to me because of the color of my skin, I never had to attend a school that was sub-par because of the neighborhood in which it was located, and while my dad’s family fled persecution in Ireland in the 19th century and weren’t allowed into the States (long story), my ancestors were never considered mere pieces of property.

White people enjoy a very privileged status in this country and we need to use that privilege to SPEAK UP when there is injustice being committed. If a friend lost a family member or had a tragedy happen, you would speak up. Guess what? There are a number of communities in this country whose lives and well-being are threatened by the men marching in Charlottesville and WE NEED TO SAY SOMETHING.

If saying it’s wrong to mock people with disabilities makes me political, then so be it.

If rejecting the notion that demeaning, groping, insulting, and assaulting women is “just how men are” makes me political, then so be it.

If supporting a free press makes me political, then so be it.

If speaking out when religious and ethnic minorities are targeted with misinformation campaigns that have dramatically increased hate crimes against them makes me political, then so be it.

If believing the president of the United States is not above the rule of law, or the most basic ethical accountability, makes me political, then so be it.

If refusing to stand by as desperate refugee families, including many children, are turned away from safety based on misinformation and fear makes me political, then so be it.

If calling my senators to oppose a healthcare bill that would likely increase the abortion rate and definitely leave my friends with special needs kids bankrupt and desperate makes me political, then so be it.

If expecting the president of the United States to behave with some semblance of decorum and decency, even on Twitter, makes me political, then so be it.

If getting angry when Christian leaders shrug off sexual assault, lying, racism, bullying, cruelty to the vulnerable, and unapologetic greed and self-aggrandizement because it gets them the judge they want or the power they crave makes me political, then so be it.

If turning over tables when Christians sing hymns in honor of this administration’s ethno-nationalist agenda makes me political, then so be it.

You don’t like that I’ve gotten political?

I don’t like that the future of the Republic and the integrity of the American Church has been so glibly handed over to a man who has no respect for either.

Last Wednesday night (the 2nd), I didn’t get to sleep until probably 6:30 a.m. on Thursday morning and I had UTI symptoms. My resident just got hired on by Family Medicine as a sho’ nuff doctor and wasn’t going to be starting at the practice until the 9th so I hit up Urgent Care, hoping that La Bruja wouldn’t be one of the doctors on duty. (I had to deal with her several times last summer and she has the bedside manner of a rabid wolverine.) I gave them my UA and got triaged quickly.

As I’m sitting in the triage room talking to the medical assistant and telling her my symptoms, I suggest that they check my blood sugar on the off chance that my symptoms might be related to my sugars being screwed up. I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic 10 years ago and have been borderline for a while so it was a possibility. The medical assistant stabs my finger, puts the blood on the test strip, and announces to me that my blood sugar was 365. She then asks me when I last took my insulin. I looked at her, the color draining from my face, and told her that I wasn’t on insulin and that this was twice as high as I had ever seen it.

While I burst into tears and sobbed from exhaustion and fear, the medical assistant ran to get the doctor so the two of them could decide whether or not to treat me there or send me to the ER. I texted my mom (who was watching Daniel) and let her know that ish was going down and I might be headed over to the hospital. She texted back not to worry about Daniel (he was doing botany with her and engaging in some testing of the new washtub). The medical assistant came in, gave me a hug, and took me straight to an exam room.

The doctor came in shortly after and was wonderful. She checked me out very thoroughly and ordered bloodwork stat. After finding an antibiotic I could have, she came up with a game plan until my annual exam on the 17th. After showing me to the lab room, she went and sourced a new glucometer for me (thankfully Medicaid covered it) as well as giving me a prescription for test strips. I told her about my food issues and she gave me some suggestions for lunch, promising to call the second she had the labs back. (She sent them to the hospital to be processed *IMMEDIATELY*.)

When she called back that afternoon, I got some good news. My blood sugar was wonky but everything else was good so we were catching this early. She had me call her a few days later with my numbers (after testing 4 times a day) and they were on a positive trend down. She prescribed some Glipizide for me… which my pharmacist refused to fill because it could kill me. (It’s a sulfonurea medication and I’m very allergic to sulfa which puts me at great risk of a reaction due to cross-sensitivity.) I’ve opted to forgo the Glipizide (obviously) and work my diet for the next week and a half.

Right now, my numbers are steadily improving. I’m figuring out what I can order at $tarbux and what I can keep down. The theory is that I crossed the line into Type 2 diabetes within the last year or so and my blood sugar spiked because of the infection and stress. (PCOS-related insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes are on both sides of my dad’s family so genetics, as usual, are not in my favor.)

The game plan when I meet with my doctor in a week is to get a referral to endocrinology for the PCOS issues, nutrition to see if we can find a workable diet for me (hint: gluten-free is not an option — I don’t have a gluten sensitivity and it would further limit what I *can* eat), and an allergist to get a handle on what I am allergic to foodwise.

July 19th was my 17th blogiversary and it passed quietly because of school and things in my personal life. As a way of ignoring the crappy health news I got today, here are are some ways my life has changed since I started blogging on July 19, 2000.

I’ve come full-circle in terms of relationships. When I started this blog, I was dating Jon. Then we went through our long engagement, marriage, a short separation, and now divorce. It’s a painful realization in a lot of ways but it also provides me with a record of the good times that I can look back upon eventually.

I have lived in five states. I had spent my life in California and was living with my parents over the summer before my senior year of college. Since then, I have lived in: Ohio, Minnesota, Montana, California (again), and now Washington. I’m glad to have had these experiences in seeing how people across the country live.

I have stopped coding largely by hand. For the first year, I coded by hand and then went to Livejournal, two iterations of Greymatter, Movable Type, back to Greymatter, b2, and then WordPress 12ish years ago. It’s good to know how to do some of it still so I can fix sidebars but I’d have to learn PHP to be able to create my own themes.

I’m Episcopalian again. At the time I started blogging, I was attending my Episcopal church at home and then attending an evangelical church at school. Eventually, I attended an LCMS church, went ELCA for 10 years, AALC for three years, and then became Episcopalian again.